


if we hadn’t been at all, who would i be?

by nsofties



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - College/University, Excessive Drinking, Falling In Love, Heartbreak, Heavy Drinking, I MADE JOSHUA A BARISTA I'M SORRY FLKDSJ, Implied vomiting, M/M, and kun is really hard to read, but johnny loves him anyway, but yeah someone gets their heart broken thanks for coming, hey so i forgot to add the heartbreak tag when i posted this my b lol, idk what to tell you johnny turns 21 and this is set in america, johnny is head over heels for kun, very briefly introducing john seo m.a.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 01:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17571389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsofties/pseuds/nsofties
Summary: Johnny was nineteen the first time he fell in love with Kun. For every year he lives, Johnny falls in love a little more. These are a few small moments.





	if we hadn’t been at all, who would i be?

Johnny was nineteen, one-year into a comfortable college routine, when he met Kun Qian, the quiet international student from China, in the back of the rundown campus café. He stared at the unfamiliar person that sat in his usual booth in the back, the vinyl of the seat well-worn from years of use. Johnny, for what it’s worth, was - _ is _ \- a man of routine. So, in a moment of petulant courage, sparked by a lapse of better judgement, Johnny slid into the booth across from the - then - stranger, his arrival announced by the crashing sound of his backpack against the drywall.

Joshua, the disenchanted and blasé barista, shot him a dirty look as he made a caramel macchiato. All Johnny could offer was a sheepish grin, checking to make sure the wall was in tact before turning his attention back to Kun who stared at him with a furrowed brow and bitter smile. Before Johnny could say anything, Kun spoke, his soft voice and slight accent making Johnny forget  _ why _ he sat down in the first place.

“Can I… help you?” Opening and closing his mouth a few times, Johnny stared at the smaller man, instead choosing silence as he vigorously shook his head side-to-side. “... Then… why are you sitting there?” Johnny, for a six-foot-something man who could part crowds with just his presence, was struck silent by the man who sat across from him with an impatient expression.

“I, uh, I… I usually sit there. When I work here. You know. I. So, I… I don’t know.”

Kun slowly processed his words before an amused smile played on his lips as he turned back to his laptop. “It doesn’t have your name on it, does it?”

“... Can I work here?” mumbled Johnny, shyly reaching out to his backpack. Kun laughed and Johnny knew that it was the end.

“I don’t own this area, either, you know.” In a few short minutes, Johnny had fallen in love with the quiet international student in the back of a dingy, rundown campus café. Not that he knew he had at that moment. 

Johnny was nineteen, and for the first time, he fell in love with Kun Qian.

 

* * *

 

Johnny was twenty but felt twelve again sitting on the opposite end of the couch from Kun. Classmates from their seminar sat between them, and Johnny wished, a bit selfishly, that they  _ weren’t _ . Kun’s smile was the only thing he could focus on as his hands rested uselessly on the keyboard of his laptop.

He thinks that, in his defense, Kun’s laugh was -  _ is _ \- his favorite sound and he’d only known it for a year. Johnny wanted to record the sound of Kun’s laugh and play it on repeat when happy. He thought - _ thinks  _ \- that Kun’s voice only deserves to be associated with  _ happy _ memories and that it’s a waste if he listened to his voice only when he was sad. Kun laughed at something their classmates said every other minute, and Johnny couldn’t focus.

Not when the love of his life sat three people away. Johnny paused and shook his head. Love of his life was dramatic, but when he gave it a second thought, he isn’t sure where exactly he would rank Kun among the people in his life. He was definitely below his parents, but definitely above Joshua despite the fact that the barista would occasionally have an Americano already ready for him, no charge.

When Johnny would come into the café by himself, Joshua would raise an eyebrow and silently ask where Kun was by gesturing to the empty space beside him. Johnny wondered how in a year he and Kun became a pair, even when on opposite ends of the campus. He never asked, though, instead taking his iced americano from the barista and settling into the back of the cafe. Eventually Kun would appear, and Johnny would pointedly ignore Joshua’s gaze. 

“That sounds like something Johnny would say,” said their classmate. The sound of his name broke him from his thoughts. Johnny’s gaze wandered until it met Kun’s - familiar and comforting and filled with something that Johnny hoped was happiness.

“Well, that’s not the first time I’ve heard someone say that.”

Johnny was twenty and thought to himself that falling in love with Kun was supposed to happen.

 

* * *

 

Johnny was twenty-one and decided very quickly that alcohol was  _ not _ his friend. Kun, for what it’s worth, agreed. Warm cheek pressed against the toilet seat, he was grounded by the feeling of Kun’s hand rubbing comforting circles on his back. Johnny, quite honestly, doesn’t remember much of that night and Kun never would tell him what exactly happened on his twenty-first birthday.

Being twenty-one was nice, though - a companion to a bunch of freedoms that he only dreamt of. He thought that turning eighteen was freeing, but twenty-one felt new. For a moment. And then he drank way too much and being twenty-one felt like a trap. Johnny knew that accepting Joshua’s challenge was stupid - that trying to drink twenty-one shots in one night is just  _ asking _ for alcohol poisoning. And Johnny’s night, quite honestly, would have ended that way if not for the bartender who graciously began to serve him shots of water instead at the request of Kun.

A wave of nausea interrupted his thoughts and Kun squeezed his eyes closed as Johnny heaved. In the back of his mind, Johnny thought that after this, if Kun didn’t want to be his friend, he would understand. In fact, Johnny wasn’t even sure he wanted to be his own friend after this whole ordeal, seeing as it was his own fault that he ended up in this position in the first place.

The comforting hand on his back disappeared for a moment before Kun returned with a glass of water. 

“Drink it. Or wash your mouth out with it.” Johnny decided the latter was a better idea, swishing the water around in his mouth before spitting it out in the toilet. The sound of the bathroom door opening led to Kun’s disappearance again and Johnny concentrates on the faint sound of his voice echoing in the bathroom before Kun returned and the hand on his back was rubbing circles again.

“I… I owe you…” Johnny pressed a hand to his mouth, breathing deeply. “I owe you one.”

“Well… how about you take me on a date next week then? No alcohol.”

Johnny was twenty-one and fell in love with Kun for the third time vomiting into his dorm’s cheap toilets.

 

* * *

 

Johnny was twenty-four and not ready to be John Seo, M.A.. To clarify - he  _ was _ . He was dressed in his cap and gown when he had this thought, waiting impatiently in line to receive his degree. He could see where Kun sat with his parents in the crowd from where he stood and, in that moment, he could see his future. Not that he told anyone, anyways.

The hood felt a bit choking and he tugged at it uneasily as he tuned out the chattering of his classmates behind him. A hand pushed him from the back and Johnny, belatedly, realized that his name was called. He had tripped during undergraduate graduation, so tripping again wasn’t a surprise to Johnny and he furtively attempted to steady himself, shaking the hand of the university’s president before taking the piece of paper that added two letters onto the end of his name.

At the end of the stage, Johnny looked into the crowd and first saw his mother and father smiling proudly at thim - and then he saw Kun. Johnny’s pretty sure he blacked out of a minute because before he blinked he was on the stage and after he blinked he was at the bottom of the stairs staring at the ceiling.

Shortly after, Kun’s face filled his vision. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at Johnny’s predicament, so he did a combination of the both, struggling to catch his breath and contain his giggles as he helped Johnny up, brushing off dirt and trying not to hide his face. The fact that he even managed to pull Johnny to his feet was a display of strength in its own category and later at dinner, Kun joked that Johnny could’ve at least  _ helped _ Kun by trying to stand up.

Back in his seat, Johnny could still hear Kun’s soft giggles, even over the voices of his classmates.

Johnny was twenty-four and thought to himself that falling in love with Kun was easy.

 

* * *

 

Johnny was twenty-five and decided that being in love was the best feeling in the world, even when it wasn’t. The door slammed behind him as he struggled to reign in his strangled attempt at breathing. It was quiet for a moment, and then Johnny heard the soft closing of the front door as Kun left. Johnny thought that, for four years together, not having any fights was bizarre, but he chalked it up to Kun’s fervent need to constantly be on the same page and Johnny’s lax personality when it came to conflict.

Perhaps it was too good to be true, and perhaps the fight was long coming. Their friends had always said how weird it was that the two of them never fought and Johnny had ignored it in favor of appreciating what he had. When Johnny thinks about it, he’s not really  _ sure _ what they were fighting about. He can’t remember if it was over Johnny not being able to go to China with Kun because of work, or if it was because of Kun not trusting Johnny when he said he was just going out for dinner with coworkers.

And he knew better - he knew better than to chase after Kun, to question him, when he was upset. He had seen it enough to know that what Kun needed was space. But, he knew himself well enough to know that what he needed was companionship.

More than anything, though, Johnny worried about Kun. They were in a new apartment in a new city, in a new state, and it had only been a week. Johnny wished that this fight could’ve waited a few weeks - until they were settled in and they had a schedule and an understanding of the area. Johnny sits with his back against his door for hours until he hears the front door open and close softly. A gentle knock broke his concentration.

“Johnny?” He held his breath and hummed back. “I bought dinner. We should eat.”

Johnny was twenty-five and, through all the fights and all the pain, fell in love with Kun.

 

* * *

 

Johnny is twenty-six and he and Kun sit across from one another at their dinner table. Their food had gone cold long ago, forgotten in the middle of a fight. Johnny  _ hates _ fighting with Kun - every word feels like it tears him apart, into bits and pieces until he’s a pile of  _ nothing _ in front of Kun who closes him off with an unreadable expression and silence. But Johnny fights because he grew up thinking that you only fight when you want things to work out - that he lets himself get torn into pieces for the man he fell in love with seven years ago in a rundown coffee shop on their bustling city campus.

Out of the thousands of people on campus, he fell for Kun Qian. Johnny thinks that it was fate that led Kun to that small little booth and that pushed Johnny to, uncharacteristically, shove himself into the seat across from him. To Johnny, Kun is worth more than the world’s sum. But, even after seven years, Johnny does not understand Kun. He can’t see into Kun’s mind when he closes himself off, curled up on the couch with a book in his lap or after a particularly bad fight. He doesn’t  _ hate _ that, per say, but he wishes that Kun would open up to him - let him know what’s on his mind.

“Johnny…” Kun’s voice is hesitant as he speaks, actions careful as he pushes himself back from the table. “I want you to listen to what I have to say very,  _ very _ carefully. And I want you to let me finish before you interject, okay?”

“... Okay.”

“I don’t love you anymore.” Kun shoots him a look and Johnny’s mouth closes as he slouches in his seat, refusing to meet Kun’s gaze. “I think that sounds bad, though, because I do still love you - just not in the same way. I love you the way a person loves a friend - deeply and thoroughly, but with the understanding that perhaps, one day, we will have to part.”

_ That’s how romantic love works, too, _ thinks Johnny bitterly as Kun stands up.

“And I know… that  _ you _ know that this was coming. You’ve seen me move my things out, Johnny. This isn’t a  _ surprise _ .” Johnny says nothing, but his silence is confirmation to Kun. Because Johnny  _ did  _ know - he had come home one day to Kun’s friend, Mark Tuan, helping him move boxes out of the apartment. They said nothing to one another - Johnny hoped that it was a fluke. Kun would’ve told him that he was blinded by love. Johnny wouldn’t disagree. 

“It isn’t,” replies Johnny softly. “It isn’t.”

Johnny hates that he still loves Kun, even as he walks out the front door for the last time as  _ his _ . Johnny hates that he knows he’ll still love Kun tomorrow, and the day after that - probably months from today. Maybe even years. Johnny hates how much he loves Kun. He hates it, but he would never want to forget their time together. Johnny hates how much he loves Kun, but he will  _ never _ hate Kun.

(Kun will tell him, years later, that it was a lie - that he did still love Johnny then, and, to be honest, he still loves him  _ now _ , too. He just didn’t love him the same way he loved him before. He’ll tell him that first loves are always hard to forget, that he’ll always love Johnny, it just isn’t the same kind of love - it just wasn’t the kind of love that Johnny deserved from him. Johnny will be happily married, his son propped on his hip and, for the first time, he will understand Kun.)

The apartment feels cold and Johnny lets Kun walk away. Johnny wonders what he did wrong before he stops his thoughts from traveling that way.

Johnny is twenty-six and in love with Kun Qian, regardless of the way that the world works.

**Author's Note:**

> i just really like writing about breakups i guess :)  
> title taken from lauv’s getting over you. lauv is actually my favorite artist and the song felt fitting :)  
> another option for the summary was: Kun was practical, propitious, perceptive. Johnny figured that it was a matter of time before he left.  
> anyways this is short, but i asked my friend to pick between johnyong and johnkun without knowing what i was gonna write about and she picked johnkun so here we are!  
> anyways anyways this was bad i didn’t even think about editing it or proofreading it (so this is a post-fic apology for any spelling mistakes or grammar errors or just general choppiness) i’m sorry thanks for reading!!!!!!!!!!! i love johnkun i promise!


End file.
